West Vir­ginia QB Grier to skip bowl, pre­pare for draft

West Vir­ginia quar­ter­back Will Grier won’t play for the 15th-ranked Moun­taineers in the Camp­ing World Bowl against No. 17 Syra­cuse, in­stead fo­cus­ing on prepa­ra­tion for the NFL draft.

Grier an­nounced his de­ci­sion Satur­day in a state­ment re­leased by the school.

The se­nior joins about a dozen high-pro­file col­lege play­ers who al­ready have an­nounced they will skip their team’s bowl games. The list in­cludes Hous­ton de­fen­sive tackle Ed Oliver, LSU cor­ner­back Greedy Wil­liams, Ari­zona State re­ceiver N’Keal Harry and Michi­gan de­fen­sive tackle Rashan Gary. On Fri­day, West Vir­ginia se­nior of­fen­sive tackle Yodny Ca­juste an­nounced he would not play in the bowl.

FCS High­lights

North Dakota State 35, Col­gate 0: Eas­ton Stick threw for three touch­downs, Bruce An­der­son ran for 124 yards with a touch­down and top-seeded North Dakota State ad­vanced to the FCS semi­fi­nals for the eighth straight year with a win over eighth-seeded Col­gate.

Stick was 14 of 19 for 205 yards as the Bi­son (13-0) piled up 443 yards against the Raiders (10-2), who had the top de­fense in FCS.

The de­fend­ing na­tional cham­pi­ons, who have won 19 in a row, are home against fifth-seeded South Dakota State next week­end.

South Dakota State 27, Ken­ne­saw State 17: Taryn Chris­tion threw for one touch­down and ran for an­other – the clincher with 2:22 to play – and the fifth-seeded Jackrab­bits (10-2) held off the fourth­seeded Owls (11-2) in Ken­ne­saw, Ga.

SDSU will visit topranked North Dakota State, the reign­ing na­tional cham­pion, on Satur­day.

Late Fri­day

Maine 23, We­ber State 18: Chris Ferguson threw for two touch­downs, Ra­mon Jef­fer­son ran for a late fourth-quar­ter score and the Black Bears de­fense stymied sec­ond­seeded We­ber State Fri­day night to ad­vance to the FCS play­off semi­fi­nals for the first time.

No­table

Auburn: Fresh­man run­ning back Asa Martin said on Twit­ter he plans to trans­fer but didn’t in­di­cate any pos­si­ble des­ti­na­tions. He car­ried 13 times for 57 yards in five games – one too many to qual­ify for a a red­shirt year.